Need advice

[DeliaCristea]

Hello!
First i should mention that i am new here and that i am a teacher trainee.
I have to teach my first english lesson soon. I could choose the topic and i picked Discrimination. I already set up a plan and the mentor teacher loves it. But i need some advice in what concern the group activity. What kind of tasks would u design for a group activity based on the topic of the lesson? I should also mention that i plan to focus on racism, prejudice and stereotype and my students are advanced in english.
P.S I am from Romania:)
Thank you!

[becki]

Hi,

What is the lesson plan? Are you going to have some discussion questions? I would start the lesson with some conversation questions for students to discuss in small groups. For example, you could ask the students to brainstorm common stereotypes, or ask them what kind of racism exists in Romania.

Possible questions:
Is discrimination a problem in our society today? Explain.
How can we combat racism and discrimination?
Does race effect how you treat other people?

After the students discuss in groups, you could ask the students to share their group's thoughts to the class. Comment on common themes and opinions, or share ideas from other countries or races.

All the best,
Becki

EFL Sensei - Free EFL/ESL Lessons for Busy Teachers
http://www.eflsensei.com

[hkenglishtutor]

You could use the lesson to teach argumentative language to your students.

Giving opinions, refutations and polite responses. Perhaps also include some reading text to set the scene and act as reference material for the students to quote in their discussion.

The language content would be useful in general life (social and work situations) outside of this specific topic area of prejudice.

Good luck!

Ian

http://www.hkenglishtutors.com

[Alfredz]

Well if this is going to be a discussion then it would be more effective as the students involvement is kind of positive factor. Becki gave a nice suggestion. I agree with that and also will suggest the same. Best of luck buddy.

[DeliaCristea]

Thanks to all of you for your answers.
I like becki's idea too...and that's pretty much what i actually did.Thing is that the pieces of advice came later than the date when i had to teach. It went fine and in case somebody will use this again i should mention i started with dividing students: on one side those born on an odd day , on the other side those born on an even day,asked one group to prepare for a test while the others could do whatever they wanted to:)...then asked them how do they feel about it? Is it fair or unfair?And the students could guess the topic of the lesson.Then -brainstorming on discrimination and on types of discrimination ;the "hot" picked topics were discrimination against age, against gender and against race...introduced new vocabulary related to the main topic, talked about the bilogical myth of race, and had as group activity racism- learnt or taught? where they came up with interesting ideas and proved they actually had more knowledge than i expected them to :) As i said , everything went fine except that they seemed to not feel discriminated against , they were aware that discrimination exists in society but they have strong personalities and simply don't care about what others might think about them...a lesson learnt for me too!

[DeliaCristea]

And since i am still logged on ...here i come with another problem on which an opinion could be useful.
In a test for teachers they ask the following:
"Devise an achievement test based on two types of indirect items (five items per each exercise) and one direct item designed to measure students' ability to express criticism".

Well i know what means a direct and an indirect item but in this context ..to measure the ability to express criticism cannot really figure it out.
For the direct item it's easier..could ask for an essay,or a discussion about a newspaper article etc
but what would u choose as indirect items because i do not think you can measure the ability to express criticism through multiple choice questions or cloze questions...maybe "fill-in"?!
Thank you.